


Space Blanket

by Lokei



Category: Fantastic Four (Movieverse)
Genre: Humor, M/M, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-24
Updated: 2008-04-24
Packaged: 2017-10-19 02:22:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokei/pseuds/Lokei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Next time, Reed’s going to pack his poncho.  Then again, maybe not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Space Blanket

**Author's Note:**

  * For [romanticalgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/gifts).



> by special request, for [](http://romanticalgirl.livejournal.com/profile)[**romanticalgirl**](http://romanticalgirl.livejournal.com/)’s [wet-n-wild challenge](http://romanticalgirl.livejournal.com/601682.html) for April. Hope this fit the bill!

It was hard not to laugh. Part of Johnny really wanted to, the part of him that up until recently had been in the driver’s seat—but Johnny, not being actually as dim as he enjoyed pretending to be, had lately noticed that when teasing his favorite mark, there was a less enjoyable flicker of pain under Reed’s more enjoyable flushed embarrassment.

Reed was already looking plenty embarrassed. Johnny decided not to laugh.

“They say any landing you can walk away from is a good one,” he offered instead, heroically suppressing a look at the dented and sorry remains of their beloved flying car.

“Says the guy that crashed a simulator,” Reed riposted gloomily.

“Hey, dude, we’re standing and it’s salvageable. What more do you want?” Johnny shrugged.

Reed looked eloquently at their surroundings. He didn’t say a word.

Silently, Johnny conceded that Richards had a point. “Okay, so maybe it would be better if we’d crashed somewhere in, you know, the Adirondacks, where Sue and the big guy could have come to get us in a few hours, instead of being—where are we?”

“Canada,” Reed confirmed, brows lowering balefully. “Specifically, the middle of nowhere, Canada.”

Johnny clapped Richards on the back. “Good job, Reed. As specifics go, that was remarkably unhelpful. You been taking lessons from me, or what?”

Reed glowered some more, an expression that Johnny appreciated largely for its humorous value, though when he realized the glare was not directed his way, it lost some of its appeal.

“Reed?”

“Storm,” Reed replied.

“That’s me, what of it?” Johnny was genuinely confused. Reed had never called him by his last name in his life.

“No, storm,” Reed repeated with emphasis, pointing this time out over the lake and past the line of gigantic evergreens to where the sky was darkening ominously—and rapidly—in their direction.  
“Ohhhhh,” Johnny grimaced. “Looks like we’re gonna get wet. Unless you’ve got a spare engine or a tent up your sleeve?”

Reed was madly typing on his cell phone and merely grimaced vaguely at Johnny’s irreverence. Johnny listened with growing amusement to Reed’s side of what was apparently a very uncomfortable call to Sue—“It’s me. We had a few difficulties with the anti-gravity compensator on the—no, I wasn’t letting Johnny drive—yes, it’s mostly in one piece—well we couldn’t exactly test those kind of modifications over Manhattan—well, you see we hit a—I realize it might take some time but—yes I know you’re at the conference—is Ben there?—could I talk to him?—Sue, really it might be better if—Canada.”

There was a long silence on Reed’s side of the conversation, which ended finally with a “Tomorrow? Yes, I’ll make sure it’s on so you can trace it. Tomorrow? Really?—Yeah, I know you are. Thanks.”

The sky was a particularly bilious shade of gray-green by the time Reed snapped off the phone.  
“Well?” Johnny asked. “When are they coming to pick us up, and where’s the nearest hotel so we can wait for them?”

Reed grimaced. “We can’t.”

Johnny pantomimed deafness in one ear. “I’m sorry, you were saying?”

Reed crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the pilot. “We can’t leave the car, it’s got sensitive equipment on it. We have to stay and keep an eye on it until Sue and Ben can get the truck up here to collect it and us.”

Johnny echoed Reed’s movements and crossed his own arms. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

Reed opened his mouth—and the skies opened simultaneously.

Johnny was at the tree line and under some sort of cover within seconds, but it took Reed a little longer, not that the end result was any different. Johnny was damp, but decent enough. Due to the high mortality rate of his clothing, he’d pretty much taken to always wearing his suit under his street clothes any time he was going more than five minutes from the Baxter, so even though his shirt and jeans were sodden, he was mostly comfortable under his space-age flame-proof blue stretchy wonder suit.

Reed, however, was entirely drenched. He had also apparently forgotten or chosen not to wear his suit under his button-down shirt and jeans—a little strange for Reed, who was generally over prepared, but it had been sunny, hot, and pretty much weather-perfect when they took off from the city this morning. This meant, however, that unlike Johnny, who was respectably uninteresting in his soggy long-sleeve t-shirt, Reed’s white shirt with vertical blue stripes was now see-through.  
And clinging.

And, well, see-through and clinging, which pretty much covered it all, except for what it didn’t.  
Johnny knew himself to be in good shape. He wasn’t the big guy, of course, who had rocks instead of muscles and therefore an unfair advantage, but he’d always figured himself to be easily the best looking thing in blue spandex, a claim that was made easier by the fact that his sister spent most of the time invisible. He’d also had a few amused hours speculating on whether Reed had his suit padded, since Johnny certainly never ran into the scientist at the gym. And after all, how much muscle could a Gumby like Reed carry, anyway?

Apparently enough for that indecently sodden shirt to stick determinedly to some wiry, ropy muscles in his arms and across his shoulders, Johnny mused. Not the same shape as his own sportsman’s physique, but it suited the scientist-slash-superhero, and clearly stood him in good stead in their occasional tussles with uppity criminals of a violent persuasion.

This assessment was not the answer Johnny had expected, not that he should have been expecting to ever get the answer in the first place. Reed was dating his sister, and Johnny had his pick of every model, actress, waitress, and not-so-innocent-schoolteacher in the greater New York metropolitan area. Johnny should really not be noticing anything about Reed’s shirt, or the way the shirt was not the only thing clinging to the rest of Reed.

Not. Noticing.

Not.

Well okay, not really.

“Johnny.” Reed’s voice startled him and he jumped a little.

“Yeah?”

“You’re staring.” Reed raised an eyebrow. “And steaming.”

If Johnny himself had said that, he knew exactly what it was he would have meant, but since this was Reed, Johnny was about ninety-five percent sure that wasn’t a come-on. This was Reed, after all. So he looked down at himself and realized that he was not imagining the fact that it was getting hotter than usual right here in his personal space. His clothes were steaming gently as his body heat worked through the suit underneath. “How about that,” he muttered.

“There are—“ Reed seemed to need to clear his throat, and continued. “There are a couple of space blankets and flashlights under the seats.”

For the first time Johnny noticed that Reed’s arms had migrated back around his chest and his lips were going a little blue. Being a human bouncing ball didn’t seem to make you immune to crappy weather and cold, unlike being the Human Torch. Not for the first time, Johnny was incredibly grateful he ended up with his power, and not one of the others’.

“Be right back,” he zipped out to the soggy silver chariot, located the blankets, flashlights, and bag of snacks which Reed didn’t know he’d stashed under the dashboard, and headed back to the meager shelter of the trees where Reed was huddling, dripping.

The work of another few moments saw one of the blankets stretched out like a tarp over a low hanging couple of branches and anchored with some nearby rocks, and another one on the ground so that there was a moderately dry space. It was not what Johnny would have termed at all a roomy dry space, as they were now sitting an arm’s length apart, with the blanket nearly brushing their heads, but it was better than sitting there getting dripped on and feeling the lake apparently crawling up your butt.

They were still a little too close. Johnny was not sure he wanted to be noticing the way the Reed was shivering, or the way the rain had sent an errant curl of dark hair down over his forehead, making him look so much younger and more approachable than usual. Reed was looking at him, too, though, with an inscrutable expression that made Johnny desperate to break the silence.

“Cold?” he asked finally.

Reed pursed his lips and nodded.

“I’m not,” Johnny said, and was somewhat surprised to see his hand reach out, apparently without him consciously willing it, to rest against Reed’s chest with a small sizzle. When he managed to pull his hand away, the mark of his palm over Reed’s pectoral was visible as a five-fingered dry-spot in the cloth. Johnny found he couldn’t look away from the spot. Neither could Reed, though the scientist was doing everything in his power to project scientific curiosity in an autonomous nerve response to an external stimulus like temperature change, rather than look like he was the least bit interested in Johnny’s hand essentially having been right there over his nipple.

In fact, Reed was looking a little cross-eyed and freaked, if the truth be told. Johnny did not think this was at all a fair reaction, let alone an accurate assessment of his technique.  
If he had been Reed he might have decided that this sense of affront was worth analyzing, but he wasn’t. He was the guy that threw himself off the top of the Baxter building before he was certain he wasn’t going to plummet straight down, so Johnny was used to flying by the seat of his pants. Deciding that in this case he’d fly better without them, Johnny rapidly shimmied out of his street clothes and unzipped the top half of his blue suit, pushing it down to puddle around his waist before looking at Reed, who was trying very hard to look interested in the branch above their heads.

“Dude, you’re clearly cold. Get over here and warm up before you end up sneezing all over me for the rest of the night,” Johnny’s tone was matter-of-fact, and seemed to reassure Reed, whose eyes slid down to meet Johnny’s practiced open gaze, which normally netted him many phone numbers.  
The scientist scooted a little closer and Johnny waited patiently until he was in easy snatching range, at which point he quickly extracted a surprised Reed from his shirt, pushed him down, and rolled on top of him.

Once there he realized that having a plan might have been a good idea, rather than this throw-yourself-off-the-building variety of scheme, because Reed was blinking up at him as Johnny braced himself on his forearms, and though Reed’s lips were no longer blue, that was probably more likely because he was in the middle of cooking up a full-body blush.

At least, Johnny was pretty sure it was full-body. He was a little afraid to check, and seemingly unable to break Reed’s gaze anyway. After a few minutes of rather fraught silence in which the pair of them steamed gently, vapor rising off their skins as Johnny kindled, Reed tilted his head a little and said, so matter-of-factly that Johnny thought he might fall over in shock—

“You know, my pants are soaking, too.”

It was Johnny’s turn to blink. He’d been starting to feel a little silly—neither of them were short men, and they were mere inches from having heads or feet out the ends of the space blankets—but then he was moving, and Reed’s hands were goddamn everywhere, crazy rubber bastard, and then their pants joined the pile in the driest corner and somehow or other Reed had managed to land himself on top of Johnny.

The scientist plastered himself across Johnny’s chest with an air of smug pleasure like a cat that’s found a spot in the sunlight. He did not look anywhere near as flustered as would make Johnny comfortable, quite frankly, so Johnny decided to turn the tables again. Hooking his hands behind his head, he enquired casually,

“Satisfied?”

By all rights, this should have made Reed a quivering, blushing mess after the way Johnny could make one word drip with innuendo. It was one of Johnny’s talents, after all. Reed should be backing off, right about now, not doing that thing with the leg twining and the hands wrapping around Johnny’s wrists and the leaning and the smirking.

Especially not the smirking.

Those smirking lips were about a breath and a half away from Johnny’s own, and certain other pieces of anatomy were not uninterested in this development. This was particularly true when Reed chuckled, and Johnny began to wonder if he was not the only one who liked playing dimmer than he was.

“I spent years of design work, months of computer simulations and prototype testing, and a ridiculous amount of money to put two backups of every vital system into that flying car. You think I actually forgot my suit and the majority of the emergency supplies in case the backups failed?” Reed’s voice was lower than usual and the knowing smile that curved his lips would have been equally at home on Johnny’s face.

So Johnny decided to take it.

When he dropped his head back to the ground between their interlocked hands, forced to stop trying to extract Reed’s smirk from somewhere around his tonsils by this unfortunate need for oxygen, he shook his head incredulously.

“Reed, man, you’re saying you flew us into that storm on purpose?”

There was that chuckle again, accompanied by a rather enviable roll of hips that seemed to start at Reed’s toes and work up to his shoulders. “Isn’t it obvious, Johnny? I like storms.”

There was another wicked grin on Reed’s face. Johnny decided to flip them over and take that one too.


End file.
